20 Best Foreign Movies Of 2016

Iranian-born filmmaker Babak Anvari’s first-time feature is a pro-feminist horror set in war-torn 1980s Tehran. When her doctor husband is drafted to help out on the frontlines of the War of the Cities, Sideh – a former medical student herself forbidden from finishing her studies due to her political activism – elects to stay alone with their daughter Dorsa in their crumbling, almost completely abandoned apartment block. As if the threat of constant bombardment wasn’t enough, the mother-daughter duo must also deal with a malevolent spirit known as a Djinn that starts stalking them.

Comparisons with the equally critically acclaimed and feminist in tone 2014 Australian horror The Babadook are inevitable, but what sets Under the Shadow apart from similar films that came before it is its all too real setting.